Top Ten Films (Plus One)

To me, there seems to be a massive hole atop this list where some kind of singular, monolithic “film of the year” should be (do those even exist any more?). Regardless, here are eleven wonders:

The Headless Woman

1. The Headless Woman (Lucretia Martel) Put down by some as vacant formalism, Martel’s third effort is a spiral of heightened perception, numbed hallucination, and atmospheric terror. The sound design only deepens the dizziness.

3. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien) The year’s best French film, courtesy of Taiwan’s master of light and movement. It’s like watching memories being formed.

Still Life

4. Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke) Exceedingly prolific (he’s made four films of varying length in the time it took Still Life to be released here), Zhang-ke remains the indefatigably observant chronicler of our dim future.

6. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant) Milk may have all the heart, but Van Sant’s earlier 08 effort is a fluid blend of the bravura techniques from his Tarr-inspired reboot and the textures of earlier dreamscapes.

7. California Company Town (Lee Anne Schmitt) Another CalArts 16mm instant artifact (see #2), this one more deliberately essayistic.

8. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas) If only for its audacious opening shot and rhyming final take, but also all the earthy, bizarro splendor in-between.

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